But what if you could?
Now. After half a lifetime with your unchosen
family.

Would you make wholesale
changes? Would your next family reunion look like the last two
minutes of a basketball game with a 25 point deficit, as you
usher in replacements just before dessert?

Of course, many people
would like to make some substitutions up and down the family
tree. But no one, for the most part, does it.

But if you could in your
mind, just for one fantasy-filled evening, would
you?

I had 2 brothers and 3
sisters. I currently have 1 brother and 2 sisters.

They remain a swarm of
stinger-less bees; on paper harmless, but in reality capable of
more destructive damage than Mike Tyson on his 5th
Vodka tonic trying to pick up a stripper.

Inflicting damage as
much by their INaction as by their actions, they
lie inert where legitimate thought and analysis are begged for,
but will blunder in through the ubiquitous swinging saloon doors
with flabby, weightless opinions on anything without gravitas,
especially on how OTHERS should
behave.

It has always amused me
that the people with the most answers don't have a fucking clue
as to what the question is. Beyond irony.

Who would be my utility
players off the bench? Who would I give that familiar, over the
shoulder arm wave to; who would I summon from the bullpen of the
history of man or woman to save the game? That is fun to even
type those words. Like getting the opportunity to list (possess?)
your favorite books, movies or athletes.

This question reminds me
of a great bar discussion starter. "If you could have a drink or
3 with anybody who has ever lived or died, who would it
be?"

Let's limit it to five,
which immediately rings as impossible to my hungry ears. But not
unlike with my family, I will accept these
limitations.

Ralph Waldo
Emerson. For two very obvious reasons; two quotes,
actually:

"If you are
noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and
myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in
the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my
own."

- Emerson's
evisceration of hypocrisy. Though rooted in pragmatism, this
quote has some deliciously contradictory strains of thought.
Idealism tempered with reality; the conscious choice of a
potentially isolated life versus one surrounded by
superficiality. And the simple refusal to dislodge oneself from
their individual truths.

"Though you
may travel the world to find the beautiful, you must have it
within you or you will find it not."

- Inner
Beauty…fleshed out, you can change your zip code, pack your bags
and flee when the going gets tough, but every single piece of
dirty laundry will follow you…it's not where you live, it's
HOW you live.

If either needs further
explaining or interpretation, then there ain't no seat at my Al
"CONK!" uin round table for you, my brother.

Winston
Churchill. Simply because I would like to ask him the
following: "Where, in your opinion, did it all start to go
wrong?"

And of course, who
wouldn't want to pose that same query to God himself,
right?

Except God doesn't
EXIST!

(I crack myself up, sue
me)

Bill
Russell. Simply because after we exhausted talking about
one of my favorite subjects, Sports, he could easily segue to
more existential, cerebral and esoteric material with nary a
hitch in his intellectual giddyup

Dorothy
Parker: Hell, somebody's got to pay for
drinks. And her sarcastic, misanthropic takes on life, people,
and the inherent vagaries associated with both?
Priceless.

Ernest
Hemingway. And somebody has to
drink those drinks, right? I am more an
admirer of the way he lived his life to the fullest, then his
often awkward, stunted, almost stultifying prose. For how to
squeeze every last drop of good Havana rum out of life, Ernest is
my guy.

That's five. And of
course, thirty more names sprung to mind while listing those
five. I like my cross-section, my variety. A philosopher; a
politician; the single most decorated athlete in the history of
sports and also the only black at the table (he should be used to
that); an avowed cynic with a rapier
wit (and the only woman); and the most influential American
writer of his lifetime, and possibly ever.

Those five would consist
of my fantasy family. Of course it is inherently unfair to assess
my family when compared to some of the greatest minds of the past
couple of hundred years. Hell, I couldn't measure up,
either.

That doesn't keep me
from fantasizing.

But just like dealing
with family is often a lesson in frustration and disappointment.
To dream of a Happy Hour with these five is equal in pain,
because agonizing over what you have is no different than longing
for what you don't have.